Dissonance
by Assimbya
Summary: AU. Four things that did not happen on October 2nd (but which literary critics believe did). Transitional quotes in italics are from Leonard Wolf's The Essential Dracula. Warning for sexual assault.


_Just what is going on here? A vengeful cuckoldry?_

The Count hadn't touched her, at least not yet. His long fingered hands were around Jonathan's throat, his fangs bared in a snarl only inches from his face. She did not dare to speak – the wrong word could cause those fingers to contract, crushing Jonathan's windpipe as surely as if it was a fragile reed.

"You're certainly daring, Mr. Harker," the Count began, each word a curse, "to flee the home in which you were a guest, and then to join others in a battle against your own gracious host. But there are ways to make you suffer that could not be alleviated by any amount of affected stoicism."

With that, he let go of Jonathan, who drew in great gasps of air, rubbing the bruised skin at his throat. Mina felt the strength within her coiling up like a snake preparing to strike, waiting for the moment that the Count moved far enough away from Jonathan for her to do something, pull Jonathan away or attack him in any way he could – she pictured her short nails clawing at his eyes, a more violent fantasy than she any she was accustomed to.

But the Count didn't immediately move away from Jonathan, instead regarding him carefully. "You won't move, will you, Jonathan?" he asked, in words so soft that Mina had to strain to hear them, "I can make this far more difficult for both you and your wife if you do."

Mina saw Jonathan swallow. She wondered what the Count meant, and how Jonathan understood him. She did not want to think of the Count speaking to him in more than words, their conversations layered with memory and association.

It was then that the Count turned to her and somehow, despite all her furious imaginings, when he held her in the gaze of his red eyes, she could not move. He gripped her shoulders in strong hands, pushing her down, holding her still beneath him. She could not feel his breath on her face. He had no breath. It was something inhuman that touched her, something dead.

"_Watch,_" the Count commanded Jonathan.

Mina opened her mouth to scream, but no sooner had she done so than his fingers were between her lips, pushing down into her throat, making her cough and gag. "I will be gentler," he said, "if you do not resist me, Mrs. Harker. Let your husband see how little he can protect his own wife."

She heard a muffled sob from Jonathan. Mina tried to fight, tried to kick at the Count, but her limbs felt weighted, as though they had been chained. She found herself wondering desperately why Jonathan did not do something, though she knew the Count's power, she knew that perhaps he had somehow made that impossible. She thought that, if she lived through this, she and Jonathan would never be able to see one another the same way again.

This, she realized as the Count pulled her legs apart, pushing up her nightdress, was probably the point.

_A ménage a trois?_

She can feel everything. Her body is bright and gleaming and alive, even as her mind feels sluggish, tangled, clouded up with mist. She is between them, hazily noticing how cold the Count's skin is compared to Jonathan's own.

She is dreaming, she thinks - she has dreamt of the Count often since she read Jonathan's diary, though she has spoken to no one about these dreams. The dreams have varied - in some, she has found herself in the Count's castle among the vampire women as Jonathan himself described. She lies supine, waiting for a bite which never comes. In others, she dines with the Count, who pours her wine and speaks of Jonathan. "Your husband," the imagined Count says, "is a fine man. His blood is so sweet."

But this dream is new, both in its circumstances and in the vividness of its sensation. There are hands upon her skin, she does not know whose, and she feels herself shift under them, in desire and discomfort. Oh, how she has longed to be touched.

"Let me see you together," says a quiet voice which must be the Count's. Jonathan kisses her. She reaches out her arms for him, feels herself desirous and open. Jonathan embraces her. Everything is easy and clear, like following a path. They could not do anything else. They would not wish to. There is no question of will or choice, only this listening, only the ease of not having to decide. This is a relief; it has been so difficult to learn to touch one another, in these uncertain few months since Jonathan's return and their own marriage. The Count is there, as they have intercourse, touching Jonathan's back, Mina's hair. When Jonathan has spent himself and lies, eyes half closed, beside her, the Count pulls her towards him, kissing her, biting her lips.

"I will," he says, "have both of you. What pleasure, to possess, to preserve in immortality this union. You will be mine." His hand is between Mina's legs. She does not mind this, but she knows somehow that she would if she could think clearly. But here there is no thought. "I will watch you hunt together, fingers linked in the snow. He will see you among my wives, and you will see him under my touch. Such variations of pleasure you two will give me."

As he continues to touch her he is drawing one long fingernail across his chest, till blood wells. Mina feels herself beginning to panic. "Your husband is bound to me already," the Count says gently, reassuringly, "you will only join him in this." He catches her hair in his fingers, which she thinks now are cruel, frightening. Why has she submitted to all this? Why is she not fighting?

"Drink," he tells her.

_Mutual oral sexuality?_

She thought his words were almost the worst thing. "I imagine," he told her coolly, "that Jonathan does not know how to pleasure you such, nor you him. You will think of me now, every time he touches you, knowing how inept, how inexperienced your young husband is. You, of course, will not be quite so inept, once I am finished with you. Perhaps he should thank me, for doing him the service of educating his wife for him."

She could not help feeling pleasure; her body reacted despite her will, heating under his touch and fingers. He was right that Jonathan had not touched her this way; she had not wished for Jonathan to touch her this way. She felt so vulnerable, her body shaking before him.

She could not stop thinking of his teeth, of the fangs that had pierced Lucy's neck.

He began undressing himself, when he had finished. "You will do the same for me," he commanded, "open your mouth."

She wanted to scream, to flee, to shake Jonathan awake, but she was too frightened. She could imagine those white fingers catching Jonathan's neck between them, dashing his head against the wall easily. Her body still trembled with unwanted arousal - she did not want to be seen this way, as though her pleasure had marked her, painted as unclean, condemned.

He held both her hands in one of his, crushing them together tight behind her back until she wanted to cry out with the pain. "Flesh of my flesh, kin of my kin," the Count said, and, again, "open your mouth."

She wept and did.

With a flash of light, the door opened.

_The impregnation of Mina?_

He let her lie there and cry, sitting on the bed still only half dressed, his shirt open, as she pressed her thighs together as if she could halt the feeling of dampness between them, clear evidence of her violation. Casually, no clear expression on his face, he reached down to touch her cheek, the purpose of his gesture unclear – did he mean to comfort her, or upset her or simply get her attention?

"You'll know for certain in a few months," he began without preamble, "though you'll have guessed long before then, despite all your efforts to forget what I will soon say to you. Your belly will round, and naïve Jonathan will be delighted, not even bothering to count the months on his fingers. But you'll know. All your men will think me dead by that point, I imagine – I doubt that I'll want to continue this charade forever, so I'll have convinced all of them of their victory long before that point.

"You'll have tried to forget me, I'm sure, but you will remember everything, and be sure to blame each small pain and humiliation of pregnancy upon me. You will be careful not to scream in audible words at the birth, for fear that you will cry out your hatred of me and thus incite suspicion. And then the child, whether boy or girl, will have clear hints of me, or you will see them when they are not truly there. You will read each moment of intentional cruelty, each disarmingly penetrating stare, as an inheritance from me, its father, and thus consider this child already damned, cursed probably to be as much of a monster as I am.

"But I know you well enough to know that you will be a devoted mother despite that, and will give to this child all your intelligence and education and practicality and clear thinking. You will try not to tell them of me, and hope against hope that our child will choose a different path than I did. But I shall come to claim the child eventually, and they will come with me, for I shall give them all the things that they will have yearned for but not found in your world of propriety and repression. They will be mine, and will need what I can give. You will weep perhaps, a little, and Jonathan will rail against fate for the remainder of his life, but you will have known from the first that there could be no other outcome.

"Believe me, Mina, I don't wish to disrupt your life, or that of your husband, any more than necessary. Your quaint lives are of little interest to me. But I need an heir, after all these centuries, and I need a mortal woman to bear it. You are strong enough, intelligent enough, wise enough. I give you both a gift and a burden, my dear – I hope that the former makes up for the latter."

He kissed her on her forehead, almost gentle, almost tender, and was gone.


End file.
